#1642 - Freestyle Friday - Deep Identity Dive

Have you ever considered the invisible labels you affix to yourself and how they shape your actions and identity? In today’s episode, Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros delve into the intricate dance between self-perception and personal evolution. This conversation peels back the layers of internal dialogue, revealing how self-imposed identities can either be a prison or a gateway to profound change.

Links mentioned:
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https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/next-level-live/
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Show notes:
(2:18) Self-imposed labels
(7:36) Identity and behavior transformation
(10:32) The dangers of labels
(14:11) Meet like-minded people and jumpstart your journey to achieving your dreams while optimizing your life. Join Next Level Group Coaching. https://www.nextleveluniverse.com/group-coaching/
(15:32) Anxiety to Awareness
(19:38) Comparison
(23:36) Understanding different perspectives
(30:24) Outro

🎙️ Hosted by Kevin Palmieri and Alan Lazaros

Next Level University is a top-ranked daily podcast for dream chasers and self-improvement lovers. With over 2,100 episodes, we help you level up in life, love, health, and wealth one day at a time. Subscribe for real, honest, no-fluff growth every single day.

Transcript

Kevin 0:00

Next level nation. Welcome back to another episode of next level university, where we help you level up your life, your love, your health and your wealth. Excuse me, we hope you enjoyed yesterday's episode, episode number 1641. Do you love yourself? A very deep episode and I enjoyed that one very, very, very much. Today. For episode number 1642, free style Friday here's my thought.

Kevin 0:27

I had a thought the other day. I Will preface it. This is I told, I told Alan, sometimes I have things I call THC thoughts. Took an edible the other night Okay, I like, I like a good edible from time to time and Tara and I were watching TV, hmm, and I was starting to get a little anxious. I didn't know if it was from the edible or from what, and this is gonna sound super weird, so I just want to preface it with that who's excited? I had this moment where I thought to myself I Literally said Kev, you're not in your mind, you are the type of person that gets anxious. Therefore, anytime you feel something, you convince yourself you're getting anxious. And then you get anxious and I had this very simple dialogue with myself of you're fine, you're fine, this is all made up in your head, you are totally fine. Three seconds later felt perfect.

Kevin 1:22

Again, I'm not saying that is the recipe for everything. I'm not saying that's a medical diagnosis that's gonna fix things. I don't mean that. But what I mean is, if you identify as shy I've done this many, many, many times if you identify as shy, you get out of your comfort zone and you go do something that somebody who identifies as shy might not do. You get to that place and then you end up sitting in the corner not engaging with people because you're so uncomfortable. Then that Reformulates the fact in your brain that I'm shy, I'm just gonna sit over here, let me just get this over with, and that, just it continues to perpetuate the problem. Really, what this is is it's the identity Level, it's the identity. It's really not the identity level, it's the identity. What do you identify as?

Kevin 2:13

Then, if you looked at all the patterns and if you looked at all the proof I mean, think about it I Would probably identify as yeah, I'm somebody who. I'm somebody who gets super anxious sometimes. I'm not saying that's not true and I'm not saying that if you Convince yourself You're not, it's not gonna, it's gonna get rid of it. I'm not saying that. But I do think there's times where we say we are something and Then we start doing things that reinforce what the thing is that we are, and then our behavior shifts and then our identity becomes that and then eventually it just becomes normal for us to be that. So that THC thought, for lack of better phrasing, it was very.

Kevin 2:58

It was very strange, alan, because I literally had a talk with myself and I said the only reason you feel like you're getting anxious is because you always say that you're the person who gets anxious when they take edibles. That's the only reason this is happening. This is totally fine, this is not a problem, you're gonna be fine. And I was fine instantly. I Don't know if it was just because I I don't know. It was very strange for me. It was very strange for me because I felt like I was talking to myself at a really deep level and it just made sense that's my, that's what I want to get started with. Freestyle Friday.

Alan 3:37

Well, the thing that came up for me is a question which is can you behave Inconsistent with your identity?

Kevin 3:47

That you're asking me I.

Speaker 3 3:51

I knew that was gonna happen. I just told you.

Kevin 3:53

I don't have almost any answers and you're asking me a question.

Speaker 3 3:56

I Knew that was gonna happen. I knew you were gonna think because a lot of times I'll start a dialogue with a question and then answer it that Kev was just expecting to have some time off the mic for a minute there.

Kevin 4:09

I'm ready.

Speaker 3 4:09

I'm ready to roll yeah no, I was asking you yes.

Kevin 4:13

I think you can In moments, and I think eventually, those moments can add up to a more significant amount of time, but it's it's almost like I Think that's where courage comes in. If you identify as someone who is shy, it's just okay. What is something that somebody who is shy wouldn't normally do? And let me just take a step in that direction. Let me take a step in that direction.

Kevin 4:40

I I Identified for a long time as somebody who is shy. I went to the venue that we're hosting next level live at today and I was like the oh, the most outgoing person ever, walking up to the front desk, talking to Kyle the, the what is he? The facility facilities manager there it was. It was something that I never would have done ten years ago. It wouldn't have been like that, it wouldn't have been, but it was just.

Kevin 5:08

I don't think what would have been different. I Probably would have been quiet and I probably would not have wanted to start conversations and I probably would have been More mousy for lack of better phrasing. But that's I think that's the important thing is, you can't change your identity overnight. It doesn't work that way. Yeah, and you almost. I Said this is somebody. The other day, I, the, what did I say? I said this on group coaching. We had a client, or we have a client who just crossed his 100th episode With his podcast and I said you know what's interesting, if somebody went through your podcast and listen to episode one, two, three, four, five, all the way up to episode 100. They would notice a zero difference in you.

Kevin 5:52

Yeah, but if they started episode one and they jumped episode 100, they're gonna say, wow, you really sucked at the beginning or you're so much better than you were now. I think fear-chasing, I think identity work, I think confidence, I think boundaries all of that stuff is like that, because you can't go from zero to ten overnight. It's just not realistic. It's not. It's just not realistic to do that. And even in this example, my funny story, that's not something I I would have been capable of doing five years ago, because I've gone through so many different bouts of what I would probably consider pressure based anxiety. I don't know if that's a real thing or a diagnosis, whatever. I'm not, I'm not saying that from a medical place, but one of the reasons in the past- you would have had me come with you probably.

Kevin 6:42

Yeah, probably I don't even think of that. It's like, yeah, this is gonna be fine. I was super excited. I was excited as hell to go today Just as a just as a An anchor point when I so I was having panic attacks when Alan and I were traveling back in 2018, I think when we got back from Arizona. That was the first time, so I had, I had my first panic attack before we went To Florida. I had another panic attack in Florida, if not multiple panic attacks. Then we flew out to Arizona and I remember that Dr Jen Esker was there. We had her on the podcast a couple times. That's where we were first introduced to her and they were do. She was doing breath work Stuff from the stage and I literally couldn't do the breath work stuff because I was so afraid I was gonna have a panic attack. We got home. I stayed in bed pretty much non-stop for like two weeks.

Alan 7:38

Yeah, that was brutal, that was brutal recovery, it was brutal.

Kevin 7:42

I thought I was sick. I Didn't know what. I didn't know what was going on. I thought maybe I, maybe I caught something, I don't know. I don't know what's going on. It was to the point where I had to teach myself how to walk on the treadmill again, because when I first started I thought I was gonna have a panic attack and I had to teach myself how to when I say teach myself, I had to work through that. I Couldn't box. It took me like a year to get back it. Not maybe not a year, but it probably six months to get back into boxing, because I was so anxious I, I was so nervous, I couldn't catch my breath, I, I'm gonna have another panic attack. So I definitely identify as someone who Deals with anxiety.

Kevin 8:23

It's it's helped me at times to just say, kev, this is in your head. Now again, I'm not saying that's gonna work forever. I'm not saying, hey, snap your fingers, it's gonna go away. I'm not saying that, but the awareness of it for me has always been very important. And then I just try to talk to myself Like Kev, you're fine, you're okay. This has happened before. You're fine, it's always been fine. You're fine. Easier said than done in the moment, but that's been my experience. It was, it was bad. It was really really bad five years ago. It was terrible, like I couldn't get out of bed for weeks at a time.

Alan 9:00

This is the danger of labels, but it it's almost like every time you label yourself as something, it empowers you and disempowers you simultaneously. I'll explain so. When you started to realize that you struggle with anxiety and you started to identify as someone who struggles with anxiety, I think there's a component of that of acceptance of okay, I Now in hey, my name is Kevin and I struggle with anxiety type of thing that that admittance factor now allows you to actually work on it, yeah, but eventually that becomes a ceiling when now that becomes why you're anxious. It's weird, so it's, it's so interesting, and I think that that happens With every label. I'm a podcaster, okay.

Alan 9:45

Well, does that mean you don't Speak? Does that mean you always have to be the one talking? There's all these things that come with it, yeah, and I think that it's important to understand what comes with these labels. I wanted to share something as well, because something came up for me while you were talking, which was you don't understand how big of a difference these things are and how big these things compound into your future. So something came up for me earlier that I thought was really powerful, where we were talking about how. I think you mentioned this on another episode where Ron had an NLU birthday. So she's been with us for four years. I don't know if you mentioned another podcast or behind the scenes, yeah.

Speaker 3 10:29

I don't think so.

Alan 10:30

So one of our team members, ron, has been with NLU for four years and NLU is seven years old. So we started in March of 2017, the Hyperconscious Podcast, and now it's March of 2024. So, ron, you had a conversation on Upwork with her four years ago and now she runs the entire production team and it's just been unbelievable. And we have a group in WhatsApp called Out here Jeffen, and it's where we all just share playful, funny stuff. And Ron had mentioned that she's happy four years quick share before heading to bed. And, since we are a day early here, I turned four years in NLPS NLPS is Next Level Podcast Solutions on the 11th and she said she saw the Upwork Convo and I said today happy NLU birthday, ron, four years old and just getting started, so grateful to have you with us.

Alan 11:24

Who knew that one Upwork conversation would change all of our lives so massively? How different is your life from that one conversation? How different is Ron's life from that one conversation? How different is NLU because of that one conversation?

Alan 11:38

And the question becomes and this is kind of what I wanted to talk about a little bit on Freestyle Friday which is you don't really know how big of a deal something's going to be when it's happening and there's. I mean, how many other conversations have you had on Upwork that ended up being nothing? So it's almost like you have to treat every conversation like it could be the conversation and that can be. So it's almost like everything matters so much and nothing matters at all. Simultaneously, is this just a Facebook message? Is this just an Upwork conversation? Is this just a WhatsApp message? Is this just one panic attack, or is this something that's going to help me grow and have an upward trajectory forever? And I think that that's kind of the philosophical discussion here, which is how do you know what to, how much effort to put into any given thing, and how do you know when to? Oh, that's not a big deal.

Kevin 12:48

You know it's hard because there is a part of me. I was thinking of this the other day. I was thinking of if, let's say, I have anxiety forever, let's just say I have anxiety for the rest of my life in some way, shape or form. Would I ever go back and change that? Because it came from this, it came from the journey it did. I never had it really before to that degree. I think it just came from being under so much pressure and so much stress and with so much uncertainty and just riding the struggle bus. And the answer was well, no. I would never change that, because how many amazing things have come from this too. That was part one, and then the second part of it is there's almost a piece of me that wishes I never knew it was anxiety. A very small piece, yeah Right, because then would I get anxious. I don't know, I have no idea If I didn't know what it was.

Alan 13:40

You get anxious, and then you get anxious about being anxious. That's how it works.

Kevin 13:43

And then it gets worse, that's how anxiety works and trigger warning for anybody who's listening, who deals with heavy anxiety, because you obviously know I'm blessed where it's not terrible. I know there's a lot of people that struggle to just get out of bed in the morning. I'm not there. I'm very blessed and I've worked a lot on it. Just in my own head. I've worked very diligently over the last, however, many years. But there is a piece of me that, yeah, at some times I wish I didn't even know what it was, because I wonder if it would affect me as much. But I think it would be worse because I would be in my head of what's this thing going on? Labels can be. I think labels can be empowering if you use the label to be in control of it. Where labels can be, they can really, I'll say, be disempowering if the label controls you. Unfortunately, but I don't know, that's a deeper conversation. Maybe there's some labels that you really you can only have so much control over. I don't really know. It's a deep conversation.

Alan 14:45

Well, the next question becomes there's a everything's in a spectrum too, so you have anxiety at what? Zero to 10? It?

Kevin 14:55

depends. It depends on it gets worse when I travel. It depends. It depends on a lot of things On day to day life, when things are just going 75% of the time level one I would say yeah, depending on which edible you ate that day. That is yeah, no, no, that's fair. Yeah, you go too much and you're asking for it.

Alan 15:20

Because I get anxiety. When I smoked with you that one time, I got tons of anxiety. That was terrible.

Kevin 15:27

Yeah, that was a fun time for me. Not really, there's nothing worse than helping someone through anxiety when they get high on weed.

Alan 15:37

Not good. Well the question. And you told me I don't struggle with anxiety, and I think that's probably true statistically speaking, but it doesn't mean I'm never anxious. I get stressed out and I jokingly say I've been cracking like a wall in a lately.

Kevin 15:53

But I don't know if you know Under the pressure. I don't know if you know where anxiety is. It's all relative.

Alan 15:57

It's all relative. Yeah, yeah, I don't know what it's like. Immediately she was like no, I'm insecure.

Kevin 16:01

It's like sweetheart, Right right. Compared to what, Compared to what.

Alan 16:04

Compared to what Exactly? And someone who really struggles with insecurity at level 10 would feel unseen and misunderstood by her saying no, no, no, it's manufactured empathy is what I call that.

Kevin 16:15

Well, this is what it is.

Alan 16:16

I've been working really hard not to have manufactured empathy Because I do. I struggle with self-doubt sometimes, but it's so minimal compared to the norm that I sometimes feel like people think I'm manufacturing empathy.

Kevin 16:27

I would trade my self-belief in for yours and I would trade my anxiety for yours any day of the week Now. But that's on my end. How do you?

Alan 16:35

know, this is actually me choosing to be yours.

Kevin 16:39

I don't. I genuinely want to know. I don't.

Alan 16:41

I don't Because I don't know what it's like to be you, but it's pretty weird.

Speaker 3 16:48

It's pretty weird to me. How that would be so weird. I know, if I could be you for a day, it would be you for a day.

Kevin 16:53

You might not come back, you might not go back.

Speaker 3 16:56

You know it would be funny, Can you imagine?

Alan 16:57

if you could. What was that silly movie where they changed places?

Kevin 17:02

There's been many. There's been many. Freaky Friday was one.

Alan 17:06

There's been many there was another funny one, ryan Reynolds and change up, change up, change up, yeah. The thing is, though, is when they change places, they're still them, they're just so. They don't feel each other's anxiety, they just change lives. You know circumstances, but I wonder what that would be like to operate from your mind for a day. I wonder how much more I would understand you.

Kevin 17:32

Oh, that would be so fascinating. Probably a ton. It would be strange. The answer is I don't know. Just from what I've seen, it's like most of the stuff I'm worried about you're not. It's kind of that. And then most of the stuff I'm not worried about you are.

Kevin 17:52

Imagine that I'm not worried about people liking me necessarily. Usually I tend, you know, people usually get along with me pretty well, just kind of. That's usually kind of how it works. But if I'm in a room with a bunch of people who are really smart, I don't think they're going to think I'm smart. I don't think we're going to have that level of conversation. I'll probably try to make them laugh, but I don't, I'm not going to fit in because I'm smart like you. That's my experience. So maybe that's a deeper, deeper.

Kevin 18:19

Deeper part of this episode is yeah, you might want to trade lives with someone. But just understand, if you were to trade lives with someone, you might also lose some of the most important things that you love about yourself. You might lose those, those might go, you might not get those, because I know comparison. Even that it's like how do you know? I know I don't, but if I was thinking from a place of comparison. I think you're definitely more confident than I am in certain things, but probably most things, and I would say you probably have less mental health struggles than I do, but also maybe that's because you've worked on them longer. There's so many things that are underneath it.

Alan 19:08

I was in the kitchen with Emilia the other day and she's five foot three and I forget what we were doing. We were making slop. We call it slop. It's basically just soup with leftover sediments.

Kevin 19:21

It's wonderful.

Alan 19:23

Yeah, it's bomb and we put raviolis. It's actually good. But we're actually having it tonight we have this stove that's underneath the microwave, above the stove and there's this little. So I'm six foot two and she uses the back burner, which is hard for me because I can't even see the food, because I'm the microwaves in the way of it, kind of. And I'm like why are you using the back burner? Use the front one? And she's like what do you mean? I said I can't even get at it, I can't see it, you know.

Speaker 3 19:54

And she's like oh, come down to my level and I was like she's like, yeah, it's kind of nice, right, it's like a little nook. I was like, oh my goodness, this is what you see. This is wild.

Alan 20:06

I've never been, you know and she's cute in the closet. She'll ask me to come in and grab something from the top shelf and she has a little step stool, which is cute, but just something as simple as that. It's very hard to understand what someone else's experience is because you're a different height, you're a different cultural background, you have different belief systems, you have different core values, you have different eyesight. One of your eyes doesn't work, that's correct.

Kevin 20:32

I have no idea what that's like. I don't know what it's like for it not to be that way. I know that's the thing Real quick when I was in middle school. I think I don't know why this had never gotten fleshed out before. I don't know if I just had never gone to the eye doctors. I have no idea. But I went to the eye doctors and they said Kev is probably pretty bad in school, right. And my mom said no, he's A's and B's. And they said there's no way. He's good at sports, though, right. And she said no, he's good at everything. He's good at everything he ever does. And they're like we have no idea how, because he's blind in one of his eyes. And then I got glasses, but I still, right now I don't. I wear glasses occasionally, like I have glasses now, I forget about them. I've been this way for 34 years. You think I don't care, I'm used to it. I don't like seeing blurry, that's all. There's no such thing as blurry when you've never seen clear.

Speaker 3 21:29

Yeah.

Alan 21:30

When I first got glasses, I remember I could see the leaves on the trees. I was driving home from the eye doctors and I remember being like oh, the leaves on the trees. There's like distinctions.

Alan 21:40

This is what it's like, and I remember thinking, yeah, this is what it's like to really see. But again, what's the lesson in all that? It's try your best to see things from other people's perspective, kind of knowing you can't. This has been really hard for me lately, but I've become much more mature, I think, in the last few years. I don't really understand fully what it's like to not believe things are possible for me. There are certain things For sure. I don't think I can be a strong man in competition. For some reason, being strong is really hard for me. I mean, it's obnoxious how weak I am. Emilia is super strong, she's really strong. It's wild. But certain things just come really easy and certain things don't, and I think that's true for all of us, depending on what extent.

Alan 22:34

And then the question becomes who's gifted? And then this whole idea of being gifted. You all, we all, know who's gifted, quote, unquote, and who's not, and all of us are gifted in certain things. But in what things and how many? And what are you gifted at? You might not even know that that's a gift because you might just think nothing of it Self-belief, I had no clue. The reverse engineering, finish lines thing, no idea. And so now it's become very evident. Oh, when you can just figure out what the recipe is, you just believe so much more in the potential of the future. We have a I talked to Emilia about this, we have clients together.

Alan 23:19

That's taught me so much, because she'll come up with stuff that I never would have come up with. I never would have thought of that. And then there's other things that are so simple for me that it's like I should really we should consult with each other before we send a message, because that's not going to land. They don't know what you're talking about. And so I had someone say this to me earlier, actually today, a client. I asked the client and there was a purpose for this too, rather than just trying to figure out who he liked better on the show. But he's been listening to the podcast for a long time. I said who do you resonate more with on the podcast? Because he's starting a YouTube channel with the different ways to communicate effectively. And he said you me, meaning me, not Kevin. And I said why. He said you're more direct. You think similarly to me. And there was one more I think. He said I was more honest and he's very hardcore.

Alan 24:15

So when he's just honest, he means just being direct about how brutal life is and most people, I think, would pick you. It depends on the person. I think the large majority of our listeners would pick you. Now here's the cool part about this show you get both, you get both and you're going to learn things you never would have from one of us. So I think that's really quite awesome. But the point of all this is what if I don't know what I don't know, kevin doesn't know what Kevin doesn't know. Kevin doesn't know what Kevin's great at, I don't know what I'm great at, and then every listener we all are looking from our own frame. The last thing I'll share about this I will never forget.

Alan 25:00

I was listening to an audio program way back in the day. This is like eight years ago when I first started getting into personal growth and they use this analogy of imagine there's a camera at a party and it's a huge rager and a fight broke out. I've talked to you about this on the hyper conscious podcast way back in the day. The fight breaks out, but the camera never sees it. Now imagine that same party, but the camera was only ever in the room where the fight broke out. The viewer, the person watching this film or whatever this home movie, they would have no idea.

Alan 25:40

Part one it was a great party, everyone had a blast, it was awesome. And person two would say, oh, that was the worst party ever. Huge fight broke out. Same party to completely different perspectives and opinions and understandings of the same party. And so what does this all come down to is, how do you keep a wide lens of understanding? I think that's what this podcast has done for us, because we've interviewed so many people, we've talked to each other, we've coached so many different people from all these different backgrounds, and the cool part about that is that you see all these different perspectives and then you figure out what patterns excuse me are common and everything's a spectrum. I didn't know. I didn't deal with anxiety until I coached people who do.

Kevin 26:26

I know, I know. I think that's the way it has to be.

Alan 26:29

Yeah, and the problem is, kev, is people that aren't in this industry, that aren't coaching all these people. They don't know that it's not just them, and I think that that's been the surprising benefit of being in this space and what we do for work. You just have such a wider perspective, because most people don't have a career built on going deep with hundreds, if not thousands, of people at this point, where you just get so many different data points on the spectrum. So it's almost like we can see the whole spectrum now and we can see where we were ignorant. And if you were to go back to episode 40, like you listened to recently, you sound ignorant to you only because you're not now.

Speaker 3 27:20

Yes, Well, I could tell.

Kevin 27:22

And the same when I go back, I could tell, based on the advice that I was giving, that I didn't really know what I was saying.

Alan 27:27

I only had one, you didn't know the implications of what you were saying from all the different perspectives.

Kevin 27:30

I had one flavor. My flavor is if you're like me, this is what's going to work for you, and I think that's where everybody starts.

Kevin 27:39

10% of you, yeah, I think that's where everybody starts is if, well, this is what works for me, it probably works for you. Then you realize, well, no, that's this work for me. That's why I always try to say look, I know I was on an edible and I was able to talk to my identity for some time and that was super weird, but it worked for me. Maybe, maybe it's worth exploring for you. We got to go because you are getting on a call right after this. Literally, if you have not gotten your tickets to next level live, please do so. We both shared enough. Next level nuggets tomorrow for you. We'll nuggets tomorrow for episode number 1643. We're going to talk about the difference between resting your body and resting your mind. Very hyper conscious episode this week. As always, we love you, we appreciate you, grateful for each and every one of you, and at NLU we learn to fans. We have family. We will talk to you all tomorrow. Stay hyper conscious. Next level nation.